The road south stank of smoke and ash.
King Duncan rode at the head of his host, his destrier's hooves clopping against half-frozen mud.
Behind him stretched a column of men, thanes in mail, spearmen in rough brigandines, archers wrapped in cloaks against the chill.
Their banners, stag, thistle, saltire, fluttered beside the wolf-banners Vetrúlfr's riders had planted along the path like grisly waystones.
Every village they passed was the same.
A charred cross toppled into a ditch. A granary split open, its wheat scattered like sand.
Cattle driven off, pigs butchered where they stood.
And the bodies, some Anglo-Saxon warriors, cut down where they'd tried to hold the palisade, others villagers caught in the fire.
The Norse had not lingered. They struck, they burned, they vanished.
Duncan reined in at the crest of a low rise overlooking a hamlet. Half the thatched roofs still smoked.
